| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: trail emerging from the forest opened to their view a walled
city and an area of cultivated land. Neither could suppress
an exclamation of surprise.
"Why, that wall is a regular engineering job," exclaimed
Smith-Oldwick
"And look at the domes and minarets of the city beyond,"
cried the girl. "There must be a civilized people beyond that
wall. Possibly we are fortunate to have fallen into their hands."
Smith-Oldwick shrugged his shoulders. "I hope so," he
said, "though I am not at all sure about people who travel
about with lions and are afraid of parrots. There must be
Tarzan the Untamed |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to
which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble
are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove
of the character and measures of a government, yield to it
their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most
conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious
obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to
dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the
President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves--the
union between themselves and the State--and refuse to pay
their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in same
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: machinery, the varied uneasiness of our dogs, the missing sledges
and other items, the deaths of men and dogs, the absence of Gedney,
and the six insanely buried biological specimens, strangely sound
in texture for all their structural injuries, from a world forty
million years dead. I do not recall whether I mentioned that upon
checking up the canine bodies we found one dog missing. We did
not think much about that till later - indeed, only Danforth and
I have thought of it at all.
The principal things I have been
keeping back relate to the bodies, and to certain subtle points
which may or may not lend a hideous and incredible kind of rationale
At the Mountains of Madness |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Sheer and bare it rose, unscalable barricade,
Beaten and blown against by the generous draught of the trade.
Dawn on its fluted brow painted rainbow light,
Close on its pinnacled crown trembled the stars at night.
Here and there in a cleft clustered contorted trees,
Or the silver beard of a stream hung and swung in the breeze.
High overhead, with a cry, the torrents leaped for the main,
And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain.
Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua's ravine,
Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was green.
Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already of old,
Ballads |
